Jayne Dowle: Communities with proud mining past need a future

I'M sending this message to the Government straight from the heart of the former Yorkshire coalfield. My own village, Worsbrough, is one of the most deprived in the area covered by the Coalfields Regeneration Trust.
Andy Lock is Head of Operations (England) for the Coalfields Regeneration Trust.Andy Lock is Head of Operations (England) for the Coalfields Regeneration Trust.
Andy Lock is Head of Operations (England) for the Coalfields Regeneration Trust.

And these are certainly deprived areas we’re talking about. Former coalfields are already among the poorest parts of the UK. Locally, our rates of unemployment, ill-health and lack of skills are among the worst.

That’s why the trust is asking the Government to find a £40m investment fund to benefit villages, including Worsbrough and a number of others in South and West Yorkshire. This cash would be used to develop new industrial and commercial space in the most deprived coalfield areas to support the growth of small businesses, backed by support and guidance which would empower local people to take the future into their own hands.

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The Government, however, has said no. Quite why the plan has been rejected is still unclear. It would, however, seem to run entirely counter-productive to any idea of a resurgent North of England.

How can our region play a full part in balancing out national economic growth when huge swathes will simply be left fallow?

Here in South Yorkshire, we have to watch as Leeds powers ever onwards and York takes crown after crown as the most-coveted place to live in the UK. Yet, as the recent Tour de Yorkshire proved, we have, in our part of the county, just as much to offer to the greater good.

If we are to move forward to any kind of devolution, we need a region with the capability of pulling together equally, otherwise we risk establishing a North-South divide on our own doorstep.

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When the trust took its proposal to Northern Powerhouse Minister Jake Berry in September last year, he rejected the idea and said that it would have to approach individual Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs) to support individual projects – of which there are 14 covering coalfields in England.

But as Andy Lock, head of operations (England) for the trust, says, much investment through LEPs is centred on major cities and towns. The “ripple effect”, as he calls it, simply doesn’t reach the areas which need it the most.

You might not think it when you look at the late spring valley shimmering in the sunlight, but here are families who haven’t worked for 30 years, since the pit-gear on the hillside came down and trees were planted in its place.

Look closely though and you will see the parents in the local supermarket struggling to count out their pennies. Only yesterday, I watched one father ask the cashier to return three or four items to the shelves because he didn’t have enough money to cover his basket.

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You’ll see the children who turn up to school without uniform because their parents can’t afford it, the houses where there’s no carpet on the floor. And if you wait, you’ll see the drug dealers pull up and do their nefarious business; peddling hope to those who have none.

So I have a very personal interest in the trust’s plan to regenerate villages such as my own. I live here, work here and I’m raising two children in the place where their ancestors toiled beneath the ground. However, it’s a common misconception that mining families live in a cloud of misty-eyed nostalgia. The truth is that working underground was a dangerous, physically demanding job which claimed lives like no other.

Every mining family is rightly proud of its heritage, but certainly by the time my father was leaving school – in the 1950s – lads were being encouraged to seek employment elsewhere, away from that ever-demanding black hole. My grandad, a faceworker most of his life, sent two of his three sons to the steelworks at Stocksbridge instead.

Automation started to take over, demand for coal began to fall and worldwide competition challenged the supremacy of the UK’s exports. It’s wrong to think that people didn’t start to consider other options; but the end came so quickly, there was no time to establish a solid alternative economic infrastructure.

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By the early 1990s, the Yorkshire coalfield was all but played out. That’s why the Coalfields Regeneration Trust was born. Not just to help people round here, but to support and improve the quality of life for 5.5m people in former mining towns and villages.

This still comes in many forms; supporting businesses, investing in property to create decent homes, setting up neighbourhood shops and advice services and sponsoring initiatives to take proud mining heritage forward into the 21st century, such as sport and community history projects.

In 2015, however, the trust lost its £10m-a-year funding and has been struggling to sustain its work since. And now there is this plan. But for it to work, the Government must take seriously its aims and ambitions and cast off the idea that any financial contribution would be a handout. Charity belongs in the past.

And, believe it or not, we still look to the future here.